PLANET HULK is yet another entry in the long line of straight to DVD/Blu-ray, animated features starring famous comic book characters in stories that might be a little too big for a studio to actually pull off with a live action format. They give fans stories they want and are usually pretty good. This time around writer Greg Pak’s story PLANET HULK is translated right from the comics onto film and it’s actually pretty good.

The PLANET HULK saga was a comic book arch a few years ago about The Hulk being shot into space by a group of super heroes who thought Hulk was just too dangerous to have around. When the film starts, Hulk is already on a rocket heading out into space and is awoken with the news that Iron Man, Namor, Black Bolt, Mister Fantastic, Doctor Strange, Black Panther, and even Professor X are the people responsible. Hulk of course smashes the ship, sending it off course. Hulk wakes up on a planet where he finds he’s weaker than normal and is soon captured by an imperialist society that forces him to compete in a series of  gladiatorial  games.  That’s right, PLANET HULK is pretty much Hulk meets GLADIATOR.

There’s of course more to it than that. Hulk is the main character here with Bruce Banner never showing up once during the film. This is all Hulk all the time. Hulk soon finds himself teamed up with a resistance that wants to take down the ruler of the planet known as The Red King, but Hulk wants nothing to do with it. The movie soon turns into a story of brotherhood and loyalty as Hulk finds that in order to really survive he has to team up with a group of aliens who think he might be “the chosen one” who can take down Red King.

As you can see it’s not a very deep story and mostly relies around the idea of Hulk smashing large enemies in an arena and that’s just fine. This isn’t a story that would wow people anyway. What you really want to see is the alien on alien violence and green blood spray as swords are slicing through different bug like creatures. It’s not hard core violent, but it’s enough to earn the film it’s PG-13 rating.

Director Sam Liu has a history with these kinds of films, adapting the often homo-erotic SUPERMAN/BATMAN: PUBLIC ENEMIES and the Thor portion of Hulk Vs. He knows how to trim the fat from the source material and give you a lean story that works in the time constraints these movies have, but some how I felt like PLANET HULK was missing something. Then I realized it’s really half a story. As a movie it stands on it’s own, but as an  interpretation of a comic book it falls apart in the last act and doesn’t really finish the story. This of course leaves room for a sequel (which I am hoping for), but at only 80 minutes it feels like they could have padded this out a little bit more with the content from the books.

The animation in PLANET HULK is good, much better than some of the releases from Marvel and Lionsgate, but by no means does this film blow anything away. It’s slightly better than a Saturday morning cartoon, and below something Disney would release as a DVD. There’s absolutely no reason to get this film on Blu-ray. That would definitely be overkill. The voice acting is about par all the way across. Hulk delivers his lines gravely and is played well by Rick D. Wasserman while other characters like the alien/bug Miek is given an overly annoying and simple performance by Sam Vincent. Over all it just feels like Marvel can’t pull in the voice talent that DC can.

PLANET HULK is a good entry into this series of movies, handles it’s source material well, making smart choices by replacing some characters with others, and giving a very fun but basic story. It’s by no means ground breaking and it’s animation won’t hold up in a few years (making me wonder why they haven’t switched to CGI yet), but over all it’s not bad. It’s worth a rental for sure.

Directors Peter Chan and Wai Man Yip have made what is easily one of the biggest, most epic stories in the history of modern Chinese cinema. The true story of a 19th century General Pang (Jet Li) and his blood brothers, is beautifully shot, incredibly moving, and has as much action as any one could ever want.

When THE WARLORDS starts General Pang is playing dead on the battlefield surrounded by the bodies of his brothers and soldiers. His army was tasked with wiping out another, and the Kui army was supposed to back him up. Instead, the Kui army stood and watched as Pang’s army was wiped out completely. Pang, shamed with his loss hides out for a while, before running into some bandits and joining their ranks.

Pang and the bandit leaders Xiang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and Er-Hu (Andy Lau) become blood brothers out of revenge for an army that’s done them both wrong. Together they gather 800 men and soon become a true military force, taking cities with  unparalleled  courage and honor. You really do get the feeling that these men would do anything for each other, through their actions, and beautifully delivered words.

Sadly there are points in the film where the narration and story is a little hard to follow. There are huge amounts of time that pass and characters motivations change without really showing why. This doesn’t hinder the film too much, but it’s a little confusing and might take some people a little while to catch up to what everyone is doing.

The films strong points are it’s action scenes by far. This is by far the bloodiest Jet Li film I’ve ever seen. The action isn’t the wire-fu (wushu) martial arts many Jet Li fans may know. Instead it’s a military combat style of film, along the lines of Braveheart, Kingdom of Heaven or the beginning of Gladiator. The choreography is beautifully done in it’s quick brutality. I can’t count how many times I was saying “oh wow” at the over the top flurry of blades. Gone is the dancing style of sword fighting and instead blades sink deep into shoulders, heads and throats with large amounts of blood flying from wounds and showering the ground. It’s incredible.

What pulled me in even further into the film was Jet Li’s performance of General Pang. He was an old, gruff, battered man who’d obviously been through quite a lot. Li’s really playing a distinguished man, a man who’s age shows with every crack in his face. Pang is often referred to as “Big Brother” and he grabs onto that and shows some real leadership. There are no speeches or rally cries like you’d see in almost every single Western action film. There’s no “They’ll never take our land…” but you never question that these men would follow Pang into the gates of hell if he asked.

The dynamic between Pang, Xiang, and Er-Hu is completely believable. Their loyalty for each other is the central force of the film and it really does work. How these three interact is incredible. The interactions between Lau’s Er-Hu and Li’s Pang will have audience members really battling over who they identify with more. While these three men are brought together through a lust for revenge, their priorities are completely different, and what they want for their men are often drastically opposed. Both of them are in the right and the wrong in many of the situations they’re in, and will have you talking about it well after the film’s last frame.

THE WARLORDS is one of the best films I’ve seen out of China in quite a while. Huge set pieces, sprawling battlefields with hundreds of extras, in full costume, riding horses and carrying swords into what looks to be certain doom for the idea of honor and revenge. Cinema doesn’t get much better than this.

4 1/2 out of 5 stars

PLANET 51 would be a good film, if it was an original idea, wasn’t so long, and had a cast that wasn’t just going through the motions with zero confidence. Yes, it other words, PLANET 51 is not a very good movie. It’s your basic fish out of water tale, but from a sci-fi point of view, with the human landing on an alien world where everyone thinks he’s some kind of monster. Captain Charles T. Baker (Dwayne Johnson) lands on Planet 51, a planet that seems to be mirror Earth in the late 1950s early 1960s. It isn’t long before he’s mistaken for a brain sucking, organ eating alien and is chased off, and eventually bumps into Lem (Justin Long), a young alien who works at the local planetarium.

Lem is of course your average teenager, trying to win over the heart of Neera (Jessica Biel), the girl next door, and would have won her heart by now if it weren’t for Captain Baker’s mishap. In other words, Justin Long is playing almost every character he’s ever played, just as a green alien. I guess that’s appropriate. Well of course with an Alien on the loose the entire planet is soon flung into chaos and fear, which is where General Grawl (Gary Oldman) and Professor Kipple (John Cleese) come in to save the day, but end up just driving the chaos even further.  Now Lem and Captain Baker have to find a way to get Baker back onto his ship before it leaves without him, stranding him on this very familiar, but still alien world. A lot of slap stick humor follows and we get an ending that you know is coming by the very nature of the film.

PLANET 51 doesn’t take any real risks and the animation is pretty outdated as far as quality is concerned. But the worst part is easily the acting. You have people like John Cleese giving the most boring performance of his entire career and Gary Oldman in a role so bland, with absolutely no emotion what so ever that you’d be hard pressed to believe it’s actually him. General Grawl doesn’t sound like Gary Oldman at all, which is a real shame since the part could have been so evil, and diabolical, but instead he’s just your average military character.

The humor in Planet 51 was another huge let down, because none of it is funny. The entire film’s comedy is so watered down and safe that it makes Saturday morning cartoons look edgy. I couldn’t believe how dumb some of it was. Kids might enjoy it, but adults will be bored  into a coma. Expect kids to really enjoy the character Rover, who is essentially Captain Baker’s robotic dog, and maybe the most enjoyable part of the film because of how well animated it is.

I can’t get behind this movie in any way or recommend it to anyone. There are so many better animated films out there that would entertain a much wider audience. This is a huge waste of time and money and easily one of the drabbest films of the year. This is what happens when a film is directed by three people. PLANET 51 gets 2 out of 5 stars.

Earlier today new photos of Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood hit the web, and now Universal Pictures has dropped an official, international trailer that is pretty awesome. It comes to us today courtesy of Coming Soon.   By the way the action is shot, and with the emphasis on Ridley Scott having directed Gladiator, I think we can expect a pretty violent and edgy Robin Hood film. This is a definite improvement over the last few times this character has hit the screen. With guitar  rhythms  pounding and heavy bass drums, this movie looks pretty hard core. I’m excited for it. What do you think?

Robin Hood hits theaters May 14th, 2010

SOMETHING SOMETHING DARKSIDE (SSDS) is the sequel to last years BLUE HARVEST, in which the FAMILY GUY cast is placed into the most popular film franchise of all time, STAR WARS. What’s amazing about these parody’s is that they’re completely licensed by Lucasfilm and include everything from the original sound effects, to the original score, and retell the stories almost exactly as the happened in the film, but of course with a Family Guy twist. Even more amazing is that it actually works because of the obvious care and love that has gone into both of these one hour specials. Of course SSDS is a retelling of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, my favorite Star Wars film, and in my top 3 favorite movies of all time.

Like BLUE HARVEST, SSDS starts out with a power outage forcing Peter to tell his family the second part of the Star Wars saga. The cast puts Lois as Leia, Peter as Han Solo, Stewie as Darth Vader and Chris as Luke. Much of the rest of the Family Guy cast rounds out the rest of the characters. You get the usual opening crawl full of some really good jokes and then the retelling truly begins. I really can’t dive into the story because if you’ve seen Empire Strikes Back then you know EXACTLY what’s going to happen, without it most of these jokes would simply go over your head and be a waste. So I’m saying this right now… If you haven’t seen the original Star Wars trilogy then go see it right away before watching this special. What makes SSDS so great is the attention to detail to all of the classic moments in Empire. Some shots are as close to frame by frame recreations as you can get with this kind of animation. It’s this level of detail that makes the jokes pop that much more. There are moments where the score, the sounds and the action will just make you think you’re watching some parallel universe version of the film and you’ll fall back into the classic nature of the series and then you’ll get thrown right into a fit of laughter from some really deranged look at the Star Wars universe.

The jokes here are pitch perfect, in fact they surpass the jokes in BLUE HARVEST several times over. SSDS is a better special in every single way. There are some great moments in here that I won’t be able to get out of my head when I go back and watch the original EMPIRE. It’s just that good. My only complaint with the entire thing is one that would actually sound pretty strange if you know me… I didn’t like the harsh Language. Family Guy has definitely taken this special into R-rated territory and that’s a shame. It’s unnecessary and really cuts down on their audience. Sure it brought a chuckle out of me when I heard Luke dropping an F-Bomb, but there were four of them. With how many kids love cartoons, and how many kids love Star Wars it’s just a bit of a disappointment. Maybe if there were a censored version it’d be ok, but with that many F-bombs, I can’t really even watch this with my mom. The other issue I had was that it’s in the 4:3 aspect ratio, meaning that it’s the wrong size for modern TVs. With most TV shows already adopting the 16:9 (Wide screen) nature of modern TVs, it’s amazing that Family Guy is still in 4:3. Even their spin-off The Cleveland show is in 16:9. I don’t know if it’s some way to try and keep continuity between every season, but it’s nearly 2010, 4:3 is the way of the past. But other than that this thing is perfect. It’s the best Star Wars parody to date because it genuinely shows that there’s a love for the series.

Family Guy’s Something Something Darkside gets a 4 1/2 out of 5 stars.

ARMORED is easily one of the dullest action films I’ve ever seen in my entire life. The story is bland, the characters are uninteresting and worst of all, it’s just plain lazy. ARMORED is about a young war veteran Ty (Columbus Short), and his younger brother Jimmy (Andre Kinney), who’s parents have passed away in the last year. Ty has taken it upon himself to get a job and take care of his younger broth. Ty’s job is that of an armored truck guard. He helps move large amounts of money from one place to another. He got the job because his father worked at the company, Eagle Shield Security, as does his godfather Mike (Matt Dillon). The biggest problem in Ty’s life is that he’s just not making enough money and the bank is threatening to take his house.

When ARMORED starts, Ty is just a rookie, a probationary member of the team, but soon he’s a full fledged guard. This is when Mike presents Ty with an offer. Knowing that Ty is down on his luck and that he could lose his house and Jimmy he presents the idea of robbing the armored trucks by setting up a fake ambush. The take would be fourty two million dollars split a few different ways worthless supporting cast of armored truck security agents.  Ty of course, being the moral force of good in the story can’t really justify the theft of that much money until he’s present with another problem that could separate him from his brother until Jimmy tuns 18. Ty’s in, but only if no one gets hurt… of course everything goes terribly wrong and soon it’s Ty against a group of actors that I would have loved to have seen in any movie but this.

I have a lot of complaints with ARMORED and the biggest one is the cast. You have actors like Laurence Fishburne playing Baines, a veteran in the world of armored trucks. You also have Jean Reno, a favorite actor of mine, playing Quinn, a character with so few lines that he’s barely a character at all. The rest of the cast is filled out with the likes of Skeet Ulrich who doesn’t say a word for the first 45 minutes he’s on screen. Milo Ventimiglia shows up as Eckhart, a sherif who stumbles upon the situation and who gives a pretty decent performance considering the role he’s given. But other wise you have a completely wasted cast. Any of these characters could have been punched up, given some depth and made the story interesting. Instead they sit around for about an hour trying to get Ty out of a truck. It’s one of the most boring films I’ve ever seen for that reason.

My other huge complaint with the film is just the wasted potential. You have a movie about armored trucks, moving vaults armed to the teeth, safer than most banks, and what does the story have them do? Nothing. A guy sits in one for a long time trying to figure out how to not get killed while the rest of the guys try to get in. When you have a movie about cool looking powerful trucks, and you give them so many glory shots at the start of the film, it’d be best to keep them moving for the majority of the movie. Instead the movie comes to a crawl when the thieves make off with the money and hold up in an old steel mill that suffers from “Hollywood Design-itis” which is when it’s very obvious a set was made for very particular shots and lacks any organic feel whatsoever. Had this movie really been about a moving heist, a constant chase for money involving these two amazing vehicles, it could have had some punch to it, instead it just sits and gets very boring very soon.

I honestly can’t recommend this movie in any way. It’s a stagnant slab of mediocrity filled with big names that are given nothing to do. Matt Dillon is an academy award winner, Jean Reno is one of the better French actors of all time, and Laurence Fishburne is Morpheus, the ultimate symbol of cool. But here they’re all just faces standing around. The dialog is boring and I swear I nodded off for a second and didn’t miss a thing (my room mate informed me of such). Any movie that puts me to sleep (which is really hard to do) doesn’t deserve my time. ARMORED gets 1 out of 5… and that’s like getting an E for effort.

One of my favorite comedies of the past five years was Frank Oz’s DEATH AT A FUNERAL. It’s a tremendously funny film with an amazing cast and a lot of scenes that stuck with me long after I saw it and passed it on to friends. Yes that’s right, I have purchased this movie more than once for myself and ended up giving it to a friend because I know they’ll love it, and they always do.

Frank Oz is a very good director. Sure he’s a master puppeteer and is of course the legendary voice of Yoda, but he’s also a very good director and has made some really good films over the years like THE SCORE, WHAT ABOUT BOB, THE INDIAN IN THE CUPBOARD, and THE STEPFORD WIVES. There are only a few missteps in his directing career and some of his films have achieved cult status like THE DARK CRYSTAL. The point is the man is a great director, and he clearly knows comedy, and all kinds of comedy at that. DEATH AT A FUNERAL was perfect for him. The writing was tight, and the comedy was near perfection. But the cast is what really sold it on top of that.  The cast of actors like Alan Tudyk and Andy Nyman really kept the film going strong and brought a ton of laughs.

Now this isn’t an old movie. It’s from 2007.  That’s less than three years ago, and here we are on the precipice of movie remake hell…. that’s right, for some reason Hollywood has gotten the great idea to remake a classic film from one of the better directors of his time, with one of the worst directors of all time. Neil LaBute, who’s responsible for literally the worst movie I’ve ever seen, The Wickerman is going to try his hand at comedy with a remake of Death at a Funeral.

Now some times I can get behind a remake, and usually I don’t let horror remakes get to me, especially if they’re from another country. But when you remake a movie, simply to get another audience to see it, even though the original is in the language the remake is, I get annoyed. The remake of DEATH AT A FUNERAL is an urban retelling with Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence. In the trailer, which didn’t make me laugh at all (AND GAVE AWAY THE ENTIRE FILM) Chris Rock seems be playing it very cool, while Martin Lawrence and Tracy Morgan act it up. Meanwhile James Marsden is playing the Alan Tudyk role, only without a shred of humor involved.

I can’t condone this kind of selfish money grabbing behavior. Hollywood is simply repackaging a film by removing everything that was good about the first and putting in large doses of awful. I truly despise everything about this film and I hope that it tanks at the box office. With the online movie blogger community already destroying it you can rest assured it’s going to be smashed online at it’s release.

If you doubt then check out the trailer here and tell me honestly if you got any laughs. And please go rent the original or buy it off Amazon. It’s a great film and I know you’ll laugh quite a bit.

Why I kept watching the AMERICAN PIE series after the third film was beyond me. They all involved a member of the Stiffler family, and were all terrible. But for the first time since AMERICAN WEDDING, the series takes an upturn with a smaller, funnier film that only has a few truly dumb hiccups along the way.

THE BOOK OF LOVE is the first film since the original that doesn’t follow a member of the Stiffler family, and for that it deserves some credit. The Stiflers are obnoxious characters and every single one of them is just doing a bad impression of Seann William Scott’s performance of the original. It’s like they exist in some weird universe where every member of the family acts the exact same way, which is something I don’t think anyone can really relate to. The focus this time is on Rob (Bug Hall) and his buddies Lube (Youtube celebrity Brandon Hardesty) and Nathan (Kevin M. Horton).

The three guys are back in the same place our main characters were in the first film. This is a simple story about three guys trying to get laid. Bug Hall really does a great job of playing a regular guy who isn’t a jerk, but can make mistakes and he’s honestly funny. His intro actually got a chuckle out of me, and I let down my guard and legitimately enjoyed the film. Rob’s goal during the film is to get with his good friend Heidi (rookie actress Beth Behrs). When Rob finds out she’s a virgin he sort of makes a strange pact with her that they’ll have sex and be each other’s firsts. At a school’s luau themed dance they plan to meet in the library to have the big moment, but when he shows up she’s already there with another guy… the shock of the moment causes rob to fumble with a torch he stole from the party and that causes a fire in the library, which in turn causes the sprinkler system to go off, which in turn ruins may books.

Of course Rob and Heidi are forced to clean up the mess after they’re caught, Heidi shirtless, and Rob obviously the cause of the trouble. While Rob is cleaning up everything he discovers… The Bible. No not the Genesis to Revelations book, but rather the book we know from the earlier films! That’s right, this AMERICAN PIE actually has a plot device that ties into the other films, rather than being a cheap cash in on the AMERICAN PIE name! It’s almost like they hired a writer who knew what he was doing… oh that’s right they DID!

This is the first film of the straight to DVD AMERICAN PIE films to be written by a person who wrote any of the original trilogy. This time around it’s David H. Steinberg who wrote the story for AMERICAN PIE 2, which while not as good as the first, was definitely better than AMERICAN WEDDING, and leagues above the rest. His touch brings the spirit of the film back to where the first two films were.

The plot Steinberg comes up with involves Rob and his friend’s trying to figure out how to get laid by deciphering the ruined pages of The Bible, but soon find that without everything in the book in perfect condition, much of the advice is terrible on it’s own and they set out to repair it, starting with the first guy who wrote in it, Noah Levenstein played once again by Eugene Levy.

The supporting cast is pretty good too, Brandon Hardesty’s first performance in a film is a little too Jonah Hill-esque but it’s still very funny at times. His character is often trying to trick women into sleeping with him and he’s always fantasizing about any hot girl just standing by him. These fantasies are often hot and extremely funny. As for Kevin Horton, he’s more of the stable reliable friend.

Sadly the worst part of this movie is anything involving Stifler, played by John Patrick Gordon, who’s constantly doing a bad impression of the Seann William Scott original once again. I legitimately hated him, which is supposed to be the point, but I’d prefer if he was cut from the film entirely. There have been so many different people playing a Stifler family member that they all blend together now

But when it comes to AMERICAN PIE there’s always been one thing that the films are about and a reason many young men set out to see them and that’s the sex, the nudity and the gross out humor and it’s all here. Many of the women are INSANELY beautiful, and sure high school students with breast implants are a rarity in the real world, but this is the world of AMERICAN PIE! It’s about as far from real as STAR WARS. School trips with strip poker and no teachers don’t happen in real life, but you can dream right?

THE BOOK OF LOVE isn’t a perfect movie, and by no means should you run out and buy it, but if you rent it, catch it on cable, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. For the first time it actually feels like the AMERICAN PIE torch has been passed on to a future generation of characters that are actually likable. There are some some what familiar faces and relatives of characters like the incredibly beautiful Nadia from the original’s cousin, who is equally as beautiful and has a terrible accent just like Shannon Elizabeth (what happened to her?!) I give AMERICAN PIE PRESENTS: THE BOOK OF LOVE a very remarkable 3 out of 5 stars. Against all odds director John Putch (SCRUBS) and the AMERICAN PIE series made a decent comedy.

Some new publicity photos for IRON MAN 2 surfaced on IGN.com today involving three of the film’s main characters. The first being the insanely sexy Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow, the second is Mickey Rourke as Whiplash taking a look at some broken armor, and the last is Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark himself looking at some kind of box hidden in his floor. Helper is by his side with a map, maybe his father hid something? Still very cool stuff all around.

IRON MAN 2 hits theaters on May 7th, 2010.

Through many tweets today we found out that the IRON MAN 2 poster was going to hit at 3pm on Yahoo, and, when that time came, the poster that hit was purely badass. It had everything you’d want from a teaser poster. Iron Man and his sidekick War Machine back to back, looking very cool. What do you think of the new poster, and the look of War Machine so far?

THE PRISONER was a cult classic TV show from the 1960s about a spy who knew just a little too much and was sent to a resort like prison called “The Village” after he resigned. We never knew his name, but he was designated as Number 6.

This time around he wave a much more surreal version of the story where The Village is in a desert filled with people of all walks of life. Everyone has a number, and everyone has a job. Nobody believes that there is anything outside of the Village, except for 6 (Jim Caviezel). In charge of everything is Number 2 (Ian McKellen), a very strange old man who seems to have some kind of scheme up his sleeve but we never really get a good glimpse as to what it is.

To be frank, I’m not a huge fan of the original series. It only lasted seventeen episodes and remains a cult classic, but it’s from decades before I was born. I understand why it’s loved, but I have no love for it myself. I say that because I need to state that I’m not some purist fan boy when I tell you that I absolutely HATE the new version of THE PRISONER.

My loathing for this convoluted, confusing, messy, boring, mini-series knows no bounds. The general structure of each episode of the series takes on the form of a regular TV show, but with the end coming only six episodes in, it all feels like a lot of time wasting. There are entire episodes dedicated to characters that die off and don’t matter at all, as well as plot lines that don’t affect the over arching story whatsoever. The episode about therapy made absolutely no sense and it’s narrative was sloppy and contrived, and didn’t matter in the long run at all, the same can be said about the episode where 6 starts teaching in a school.

Much of the first two episodes revolve around 6 not believing what he’s told and he keeps running out into the desert surrounding The Village in hopes of finding a way out. Over and over he does this, to the point that it got very boring. It’s like he can’t learn his lesson at all.

Maybe the worst factor of THE PRISONER is that 6 isn’t a character that’s easy to follow or care about. The first few episodes are judging whether or not 6 is really from The Village or if he had a life on the outside, some where else. This plot thread is dropped and instead we get a version of 6 that starts to just accept the world around him and stumble through it’s insane moments, and the episode where there are two versions of 6 battling it out in his mind make the last episode even more annoying when you learn the truth behind the entire village.

I won’t give away what the big twist is, but it’s akin to what every one was saying about LOST in the first season. It’s like some one saw LOST, saw the parallels to THE PRISONER (which was noted years ago when LOST started,) and thought that a reboot would be a good idea. They even go as far as to have flash backs to 6′s previous life before the village, but they only compound the confusing nature of the show, and make it’s story that much harder to follow.

THE PRISONER is a mess with an unsatisfying ending that wants to be the next Lost but ends up being annoyingly bad. Even Ian McKellen as 2 is just going through the motions here and plays a very uninteresting adversary for 6. Steer clear of this show at all costs. It gets a 1 out of 5.

Warning: This entire article talks about an episode of South Park and gives away a few jokes. But by no means does it really ruin the episode. Spoilers, but not very big ones.

Last night’s episode of South Park really struck a chord with me as a movie geek. The plot of the episode involved taking on talk radio with Eric Cartman becoming a Rush Limbaugh/Bill O’Reilly type of character. Cartman trashed the school president Wendy saying she didn’t do enough and then the entire episode shifted to nerd culture when Cartman brought up how Wendy wants to kill Smurfs.

Cartman made a whole story/film called Dances with Smurfs where Cartman moves in with the Smurfs, falls in love with one of them and then only to have them all destroyed in front of him so that Wendy can collect Smurf-berries to power the school.

In a twist at the end Wendy flips it on Cartman by writing a book called “Going Rogue on the Smurfs” in which she claims Cartman was hired by the school to infiltrate their circle and bring back information to help her. Basically it broke down to the plot of James Cameron’s Avatar. Wendy claims to have sold the rights of the film to James Cameron and that the movie is already out and of course we get Cartman walking out of Avatar and flipping it the bird.

Which brings me to question why this formula of film works so well. The white man who becomes one with the natives who must then turn on his own greedy people. We’ve seen it with Dances with Wolves and The Last Samurai and many other films and all of them are usually very successful or critically accepted. Is it a white guilt type of thing? Whatever the case may be South Park called it out and openly claims that Avatar is basically Dancing with Smurfs.

It’s been less than a year since WATCHMEN hit the big screen and already we’re seeing our third cut of the film, and easily the most expansive. I’ll start off by saying this is a review of the film, not of the DVD/Blu-ray and all of it’s bonus features. I’ve seen every cut of the film to date and I felt that at this point, only a few months after the last release it’d be important to know if this is the version of the film to own or not, and whether or not you should buy it if you already own the last version. Take that into mind when reading this and I think you’ll see where I’m coming from.

WATCHMEN is the comic book movie that nobody said could be done. It was too story heavy, too big and ambitious, and too complex for a main stream audience. Some of that is still true. Watchmen exists in a world that asks, “What if superheroes really existed?” And then proceeds to give us an amazing vision into that reality with a band of characters all incredibly unique, memorable and in some cases incredibly naked. President Nixon has been elected into office five times, won Vietnam, and through a law known as “The Keen Act” he’s made being a super hero illegal. And that’s what makes Watchmen so unique. Rather than tell the origin story of this super hero team like most comic book stories, we’re learning about the end of super heroes, about their last stand, and about how they live their lives when they’re no longer the young people they once were.

Instead a film dedicated to their origin, we get one of the best opening credit sequences ever where we see the history of superheroes through the years. Placed into some of the most important moments in history, and putting some twists on very iconic images, the film establishes it’s world with a simple montage instead of a long drawn out narrative. Each of these heroes after all is an approximation of heroes that we already know and love.

hose characters being Night Owl II (Patrick Wilson), who desperately needs to find some meaning to his life. Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), who took the part of the Spectre after her mother forced her into it. Dr Manhattan (Billy Crudup),  the only character with true super powers. Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), the smartest man in the world. The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a man who is as evil as he is good. And finally we have Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley),  who steals the entire film with a performance that is exactly what fans of the source material would want.

Right away we’re introduced to an old, aging Comedian, retired, in a robe, making some tea and in a flash he’s gone as a stranger breaks into his house and murders him by tossing him out of a high rise window. That leads Rorschach, the only hero to break the law and not pay attention to The Keen Act, believing that some one is out to kill super heroes. This investigation leads him to a plot that could bring the entire world to it’s knees.

One of the biggest treats in the film is Dr Manhattan and his entire story, which could have been a film in and of itself. Manhattan’s story is a dark and somber one about loss of self that comes with understanding the world down to the molecules that make up everything. He’s an infinitely powerful being that’s only attachment to the world is his love, Silk Spectre II. He’s grown detached from humanity, so much so that he doesn’t seem to understand the need for clothing, as he feels no guilt. I wouldn’t either if I were built like him, but still. His story is perfect.

In the Ultimate Cut of WATCHMEN we are treated to glimpses of a comic book that a character is reading by a news stand. The book is TALES OF THE BLACK FREIGHTER. It’s animated story of Survival told by one character played by Gerard Butler. This story is interesting in it’s own right. A man lost at sea desperately trying to get back to his family after his ship is destroyed by a mysterious dark and evil vessel. It’s gruesome, gory and at times incredibly well animated. It has a comic book feel but at times some parts feel out of place. In the comics the narration is side by side with the panels, narrating both events in perfect harmony. Here the parts are used to bookend certain parts of the film like chapters, giving a glimpse of the type of story up ahead.

Even better are the added scenes involving the news stand vendor and the boy reading the comic add a feel that the WATCHMEN world is much bigger. They give a bit of the man on the street feel to all these important events. Their scenes are right out of the comics and are very welcome additions.

With all the new scenes, the animated features, and the extended moments the film can feel a little heavy. It really does push this film into the epic category. The running time is over three and a half hours. That’s a lot for a comic book movie. But it all feels complete. Some of the acting isn’t as good as one might like. Malin Akerman’s Silk Spectre is down right dreadful most of the time, but it’s leveled off with other actors giving brilliant performances, like Jackie Earl Haley and Billy Crudup, who often steal the show. Gerard Butler’s grizzled voice lends a lot of pathos to the animated moments and the pacing is never slow or boring. Any gripes one would have had with the first film should be taken care of (save the switched out ending). But the movie works all around.

Seeing WATCHMEN’s Ultimate Cut is an endeavor you can’t always take on. It’s not a movie you can just pop on at any time. It’s like the LORD OF THE RINGS and their extended editions. You get a fuller more fleshed out movie and world, but at the cost of time. If you own the original cut you may want to hang on to it for casual watching, and still have this on call for when you want to sink into the Watchmen world and be fully taken it’s world.

With the Ultimate Edition get a lot of bonus features as well including a huge audio commentary just for this version, the entire motion comics, several bonus features including the UNDER THE HOOD short film that came with the Black Freighter Blu-ray/DVD, and a digital copy of the original threatrical version of the film. It’s a lot to take in considering the Motion Comics alone could run about half the price of the blu-ray edition. It’s a very definitive edition over four blu-ray discs. And it all looks gorgeous.

At E3 this past year Microsoft announced that they’d be making an anthology anime series much like ‘The Animatrix’ but based around the ever popular Halo franchise. The first part of the series is titled ‘The Babysitter’. It’s a cool look into the war on the Covenant from a different perspective than we’re used to as players of the games.

The 105th (which I have to assume is a reference to the 501st from Star Wars) is one of the best tactical strike groups in the human forces. Their ODST, or Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, and they’re insanely well trained. When we meet the team, their sniper is awfully upset because the team has been relegated to back up. A strange place for some of the best of the best to be placed. Worried that they’re going to be babysitters for some other new shooter, the sniper is getting out all his frustrations, making quite the racket. Turns out they’re backing up some one even better than them. it’s a Spartan.

Spartans are genetically enhanced super soldiers who have had a rather heated relationship with other soldiers. The teams mission is to take out a high ranking official in the enemy army known as a Prophet. Upon entry it’s very obvious that the Spartan is going to be the baby sitter of the bunch and that the ODST are in way over their head.

As a short story this works pretty well. It’s paced well, the voice acting is good, and the stoic Spartan is as powerful as you’d expect him to be. What really makes this whole thing special is the last few moments which really hit a chord with me. I didn’t see something coming and WHAM, I was taken aback. This is a very well written look into the Halo universe and puts a spin on what we think about the Halo characters. My only gripe would be that some of the characters seem to shift proportions a little too much. Normally anime, especially feature film anime, has this thing about body shapes and how they’re supposed to be exact through an entire feature. Here it’s kind of hit or miss. But that’s a SMALL gripe for such a good short.

It’s very easy to hate a movie like this. It might as well be part of the SCARY MOVIE series, only it’s no where near as clever. Stan Helsing (Steve Howey)  is a stoner, douche bag, video store clerk who happens to be the descendent of Van Helsing, the famous monster killer that took out Dracula. On Halloween night several of films most famous monsters come to kill him, but first Stan has to drop off some tapes to the owner of the video store’s mother. Along the way they run into a lot of creepy people, but eventually get lost and trapped in a small cursed town where monsters come out after midnight. Now Stan has to save the people of the town, his friends, and live up to his destiny. Oh and he has to do it in a very terrible comedy with almost no laughs.

I honestly hated everything about this movie and had a very VERY hard time sitting through it. It’s jut on the cusp of seemingly like anyone actually tried. It’s several performances that are just bland and boring all around. The villains are bad rip offs of Pin Head, Leatherface, Freddy, Michael Myers and some others and they’re all idiots. What’s worse are there are moments that literally make no sense. One character comes out of the bathroom, did a costume change and then says “…does my vagina make me look fat?” To which the two men in the group start ranting and raving and then say no. It has nothing to do with anything, and you don’t see a vagina at all. It’s just awkward and unfunny. If they had panned down and she had some monstrous camel toe I might have understood.

Every single joke in this film fell flat. The only thing I laughed at was Leslie Neilsen’s appearance. It was surprisingly funny because he acted like a complete jerk. Most of the time Neilsen’s appearance in one of these films involves him playing some one slightly dumber than everyone around him. Here he’s sharp, witty and very biting. Nice change of pace. I guess it would have been redundant to have him playing a moron around an entire cast of people acting like morons.

You can’t really be surprised by how awful STAN HELSING is as a film. Director Bo Zenga has no directorial experience and is one of the writers on SOUL PLANE.  SOUL PLANE is one of the worst movies of all time and I’d have thought that anyone involved with creating it would have been banished from making more films. Sadly this isn’t the case. Zenga’s also responsible for writing STAN HELSING which explains the lack of any kind of humor.

Recently Variety reported that Laeta Kalogridis was hired to adapt the famous manga/anime GHOST IN THE SHELL (GITS) for DreamWorks Pictures. Kalogridis certainly understands the idea of a mechanically altered agent, since she was one of the producers and writers on the short lived remake of THE BIONIC WOMAN for Universal/NBC. Her grasp of female heroines is strong as seen with her writing for The WB’s BIRDS OF PREY. Her biggest job to date was the upcoming SHUTTER ISLAND. She’s taking over the job of writer on this project from Jamie Moss, who originally was pulled on to write.

The live action feature is going to be produced by Avi Arad and shot in 3D. No director has been hired yet, but in a back and forth twitter conversation with Duncan Jones, I discovered he has a love for the characters and material. Jones stated “If I was ever going to act, I would want to play Batou (One of the characters from the series)… lol,” He continued with “(GHOST IN THE SHELL) is one of the few sci-fi things I haven’t written myself that I would love to do.” Personally after seeing MOON I think he’s the right man for the job.

GHOST IN THE SHELL is the extremely popular series from Japan which tells the story of special police agent Motoko Kusanagi. Kusanagi was hurt very badly as a little girl and had to have her body replaced with a completely synthetic one. She later became a member of an elite squad of special agents called Section 9. By her side at all times is Batou, another synthetic cop who got his own film in GHOST IN THE SHELL 2: INNOCENCE.

GHOST IN THE SHELL’ was created by Masamune Shirow, in 1989 and still holds up today. It’s first anime film hit theaters in 1995 in Japan and later that year in America. It’s spawned multiple games and another anime TV series that broke away from the regular story line to tell a new one about cyber terrorism. GITS is almost directly responsible for influencing a lot of cyber-punk media including THE MATRIX.

I personally can’t wait for this film to hit, but some of Kalogridis’ work is a little shaky and corny. I’d like a more established set of hands on the project, otherwise we may end up with another DRAGON BALL: EVOLUTION.

THE TOURNAMENT is one of those films where the premise is so corny and overplayed that it’s strengths have to come from it’s execution. Luckily The Tournament doesn’t disappoint and is actually something of a gem. In the world of films about televised or secret death matches between over the top badasses THE TOURNAMENT stands out for having a great cast and some of the better, bloodier and more interesting action moments ever.

The Tournament itself happens every seven years, when the world’s best assassins all gather together in one random small town to do battle until one is left standing and is declared the best assassin in the world. I think the winner gets a giant pile of money as well, but that’s never made clear. Each Assassin is outfitted with a tracking device so the other killing sociopaths know exactly where to go, keeping the insanity to a clean 24 hours. OH and the trackers are explosives, so if there are too many people left alive at the end of the day, BOOM!

This time around a civilian is brought into the mix when a Frenchman (played by one of the creators of parkour/free running, Sebastien Foucan) cuts out his tracker and places it in a coffee pot. This is when it’s swallowed by alcoholic priest Father Macavoy (played by Robert Carlyle). Now this washed up, hung over shambled priest has to figure out how to stay alive when the world’s best are trying to kill him. Luckily he has Kelly Hu playing a very sexy trained killer named Lai Lai Zhen. Hu seems exceptionally buxom in this role… but that’s got NOTHING to do with the story… just makes her that much more interesting to watch. Her fight scenes are top notch though, as are most in the film.

Also being a complete and total badass is Ving Rhames as Joshua Harlow, a man who was once retired at the top of his game, but is now pulled back in when the murderer of his wife is pulled into the competition. He’s out for revenge and looks damn cool while he’s there.

I can’t lie about somethings this film has that you’ll see coming a mile away and you’ll just have to suspend your disbelief for. Of course the entire small town is wired up with HD video cameras that are part of some safety network and of course two really smart computer hackers who live off red bull and talk like they’re from a Diablo Cody film have hacked into the system and are letting the gambling billionaires see who’s winning everything. Basically they have my dream job and are the nerds everyone like me (IT Majors) wants to be.

Where the movie falters is just that it’s a played out idea and the budget isn’t nearly big enough to make all the effects look as good as they probably should. Thank god most of the gore is practical effects and the movie relies on very little CGI. There is one scene that completely took me out of the experience involving a montage of murder done to a sweet song. It’s very over the top and comedic but doesn’t fit the rest of the film at all and doesn’t do anything to push the narrative forward.

I can’t help but wish this film was getting a very wide theatrical release here in the US because it’s worth it. Sure it doesn’t have any A-list stars, but the cast here is amazing and the characters are very memorable.

I have to say that Fantastic Fest goers were the perfect audience to enjoy this soon to be cult classic with. DOGHOUSE is a British zombie film that has a truly unique and funny take on the genre.

DOGHOUSE starts out by introducing us to Vince, a divorcee who’s friends are determined to get him back on track. His friends Neil (Danny Dyer) and Mikey (Noel Clarke) come up with the idea to go to Mikey’s home town where the ratio of women to men is 4 to 1, and apparently the women are all gorgeous. They along with several more friends rent a van with a hot driver Candy (Christina Cole) and head off to this supposed heaven for single men.

When they get there, not everything is as promised. The house they’re staying at is a mess, the place is filthy and it’s in the middle of nowhere. Sure there are loads of beautiful women, but they’re all braindead mutants hell bent on killing every man they see. Now Neil, Mikey, Vince and the rest are in for the worst holiday imaginable.

This movie is hilarious. There are some truly laugh out loud horror shock moments that had me rolling. This is a great companion piece to movies like SHAUN OF THE DEAD and ZOMBIELAND. It really knows it’s material and the genre that spawned it, and director Jake West knows how to take Dan Schaffer’s writing and turn it into some thing fun.

The only real issue I had with the film is a passing one. The conclusion to everything just feels a little tagged on. It’s not a bad ending by any means, but it feels like they just didn’t quite know how to bring everything to a close

So Matt (one of the amazing writers here) and I went to the Future of 3D Panel at Fantastic Fest on an early Sunday Morning. We both fell asleep right away. Why? Well 6 dudes in one hotel room with an average of 4 to 5 hours of sleep will make any non-movie experience boring. But we learned some things and now I’d like to think of myself as a bit of a 3D film expert. There’s a lot I’ve learned about how the cameras are set up, what kind of lenses and filters you have to use and how to tell when a movie was either not made for 3D or poorly shot and constructed.

The biggest thing I learned was how you’re supposed to edit and shoot a 3D movie. Many techniques that have grown over the past 10 years need to be thrown right out of the window and the cinematographers need to get back to basics. Smooth steady shots and long takes are the key to a great 3D movie. The more you cut, the more of a headache your audience will suffer. An example I heard from one of the panelists was about how you’d typically structure your movie in the past. Before if you wanted to show a woman in red dress in a crowd, you’d simply cut to her… now with the advent of 3D, especially digital 3D you want to make the move to push to her. This brings the audience in and let’s the experience the 3D effect as much as possible.

Another thing I learned is that you don’t want to shake the camera EVER, and would never want to shoot with a steady cam. A steady cam, which can often lead to shaky cam, is for inflection. It’s supposed to give you the feel that you’re in the scene and show you the pressure or urgency or force of whatever is happening. Now with 3D you’re already there. You’re experiencing the event much more dynamically than you normally would, so there’s no need to shoot it that way. You want smooth steady shots, the head doesn’t really bounce around like that after all.

There was a movie trailer being showed at Fantastic Fest quite a bit and seeing it made me really sad after this panel because of what I had learned. If you read my favorite films of FF list then you Mandrill was way up there and if you read my review then you know that I have a lot of respect for Marko Zaror and want nothing but the best for him. Sadly his new film Defender 3D is a remake of a classic he was already in, MIRAGE MAN. Defender 3D literally does everything wrong when it comes to 3D cinema. Luckily it’s trailer isn’t anything more than a test to try and get more funding, but as it stands right now, it’s an epic fail on the big screen. It’s full of quick cuts, misaligned 3D shots, and camera angels where the camera is at a 45 degree angle with the ground. These shots all lead to a large headache and make the movie very very hard to watch.

So where am I going with all this? Well It’s become very clear to me that 3D films are meant to be shot a very specific way in order to be effective. They have to be shot and edited in an extremely precise and meticulous manner. Not every film can simply be transfered to to this style, and most shouldn’t be. Some films can, especially older films could be transfered and not really have this problem. Films like STAR WARS which are shot rather steady and don’t have many quick cuts, would do perfectly. But now I hear Joss Whedon’s new film CABIN IN THE WOODS is being transfered to 3D simply because the initial buzz on the movie is good. I’m very sad about this since the film is admittedly not shot in 3D.

Shooting in 2D and transferring to 3D isn’t the worst thing you can do with a movie, but hearing this makes me wonder if the movie can even handle the transition. Was it shot in a way where 3D will add to the experience or will it make the movie one big giant headache of a film? Pushing the movie back a year is rather sad since it’s apparently so good as it is, but will the final product suffer because the studio is trying to jump on a bandwagon of 3D cinema in order to cash in a little more.

Here’s a simple trick to find out of your 3D is good or not: Put your 3D glasses on the edge of your nose so you can quickly peer over them. You should see double images up on the screen. IF they’re exactly level with each other, then you’re seeing properly aligned 3D and that’s how it should be. If they’re not then you’ll notice one part is slightly higher than the other, which will be lower. This is a misaligned effect and can give you a massive headache in the back of your skull. Apparently some really big films that were made in 2D and transfered into 3D have this problem.

Be smart about your 3D cinema choices. It’s a very cool technology and sitting through the Real D presentation and the AVATAR footage, I can tell you that it can truly revolutionize the way we watch some films, but only those that can be properly transfered or that are properly made. Not every film is a prime candidate for 3D. As much as I hate to say it… no matter how much you love a movie it just might not be right. I loved this year’s STAR TREK and I thought it might really fit as a 3D feature. Looking back on it now though I realized it would do nothing but give me a throbbing skull… Here’s hoping Hollywood gets smart about their choices for 3D conversion and fast.

I’m going to jump right in and tell you that I hate the animation style of this movie. I prefer the clean lines of Batman The Animated Series to the subpar character work of this movie. If you don’t have the budget to make it look better than a Saturday Morning Cartoon, then go for style instead of clarity. It’s just that simple. That doesn’t mean the movie is bad, just not as pretty as I’d like it.

The Public Enemies story is about a world where Lex Luthor becomes the president of the United States of America, and ends up outlawing caped crusaders unless they come work for him. Lex’s group of Heroes includes Black Lightning, Power Girl, Katana, Starfire, Major Force and Captain Atom… if you’re not familiar, then don’t worry, Power Girl is the most famous, and not because she’s a great super hero but because of other assets.

The real story starts when a meteor the size of a small country is headed for earth in a week. The entire thing is made of Kryptonite. Luthor has a genius plan to destroy the meteor with a new enormous missile, but claims that he needs to meet with Superman just incase they need a back up plan. His real goal is to trick Superman into a fight with new Secret Service agent, Metallo, who’s powered by a Krytonite core, evening the playing field between the two. A large battle ensues with Batman coming to Superman’s rescue, Metallo gets away, but is soon found dead. Superman is framed for the crime and Luthor puts a bounty on his head for 1 billion dollars.

Superman and Batman embark on a mission to clear Superman’s name, stop the giant meteor from hitting earth, and try to stay alive while super villains from all over the DC universe try to take Superman out for the bounty. It’s definitely a good story… at least in theory. The execution, especially in the second half is so bad that it becomes laughable.

Comic books have a level of well… comicness they can get away with before an adult, no matter how big of a fan, starts to just laugh and remark on how stupid what they’re watching truly is. This came in the last act for me. The entire film started to break down into action sequence after action sequence, which can be fine, but that means you’re missing out on what could be the bets Batman detective story of all time. Batman having to prove Superman isn’t a criminal? Well you can see how cool that could be right? Instead that entire plot line is almost completely thrown away, Batman is never really a “public enemy” and we get one of the douchiest moments I’ve seen in these films…

Much of the dialogue in Public Enemies are cliches that feel like they’re out of a bad Schwarzenegger film. To top that off, most of the banter between Batman and Superman comes off more than a little homo-erotic, and very catty. If they spoke like this on the big screen people wouldn’t openly moan at how bad it is. Even Kevin Conroy, who IS BATMAN can’t save this film.